“Unfortunately, you’ve stripped its original patina…”

“Unfortunately, you’ve stripped its original patina…”

Image by andyi
Years of attending the Flea have left me with two things: a full storage unit and a good mental database of what things are worth. is a little high for a Model 100 in clean and working condition, complete with manual and accessories. It’s not unreasonable, though.

It’s tricky. I think most of the people who’d buy this would rather have an incomplete specimen for . It’s generally not hard to find them for even less than that.

The 100 is a true classic. It’s a rare example of perfect execution: they didn’t skimp on the keyboard and made necessary sacrifices elsewhere to ensure that the Model 100 would be damned-near unbreakable and would run forever on a set of batteries. It was a ubiquitous engine of journalism and field writing.

My iPad serves the same role today as the Model 100 served for writers twenty years ago. When I turn it sideways and use the virtual keyboard, it even looks and works much like a Model 100.

Photos and notes – Day 079

Image by JF Sebastian
- Day 079 of 365 -
«This is my LowePro bag for the photographic equipment… but not only for lenses, flash, batteries, cards…»

7 comments

flargh(1171 days)

Right before I joined Macworld (1999) I was doing IT for a newspaper publisher here on the Cape, and some of our reporters *still* used Model 100s to write from the field. Put in fresh AA batteries from time to time and they’d keep working.